When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed

Legendary science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, author of the classics Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, died last Wednesday at the age of 91. In his long writing career, Bradbury published hundreds of novels and short stories, becoming an icon in the world of literature that describes aliens, space ships, faraway planets—and the future of books.

Like the 13-year-old characters in his Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bradbury spent much of his boyhood visiting the public libraries of his Midwest hometown, where he was inspired by the works of such writes as Aldous Huxley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. Throughout his life he was an enormous supporter of libraries, advocating them as some of the most important institutions in American life and culture. The son of an electrician father and a Swedish immigrant mother, Bradbury lacked the means for a formal college education and prided himself on being largely self-taught. In 1971, in aid of a fundraising effort for public libraries in southern California, he published the essay “How Instead of Being Educated in College, I Was Graduated From Libraries.” Like the characters in his most famous novel, Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury feared a future wherein books would become obsolete.

Bradbury faced an arduous challenge in making his own futuristic novels part of the libraries he so dearly loved. Early in his career, he had difficulty garnering interest for his science fiction stories from mainstream publishing houses. He was famously “discovered” by a young Truman Capote, then a staff member at Mademoiselle, who picked Bradbury’s 1947 short story “Homecoming” out of the slush pile of submissions to the magazine and encouraged its publication. The Alfred A. Knopf archive at the Harry Ransom Center, however, reveals that despite Capote’s early advocacy, Bradbury continued to meet with difficulties when seeking a home for his work. In a rejection letter from 1948, a reader at the publishing house professes hesitation toward Bradbury’s first novel, Dark Carnival. The evaluator states that though there is “much talk about town” of Bradbury’s “weird, unusual, and tricky” stories, “the style, while adequate, lacks distinction.”

Three decades later Bradbury, by then a seasoned author with dozens of publications to his credit, became a highly valued writer at the Knopf firm. During the 1970s he worked closely with editors Robert Gottlieb and Nancy Nicholas, who published his Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns, Dandelion Wine, and When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed, among others. In a letter to Nicholas (shown in the slideshow above), Bradbury, who often wrote nostalgically of childhood, included a picture of himself at the age of three. He jocularly describes the photograph as “beautifully serious, as if the young writer had just been disturbed in the midst of some creative activity.”

“Fahrenheit 451,” Bradbury’s most successful novel, tells the story of futuristic firemen who burn books, believing that printed words fill citizens with contradictory values and threatening ideas. Since its publication the book has been discussed as Bradbury’s most pointed attack on censorship, anti-intellectualism, mass culture, totalitarianism, and the McCarthyism of the 1950s.

Bradbury inscribed this first edition of “Fahrenheit 451” to Rita Smith, a New York fiction editor who was also the sister of Carson McCullers. In the 1940s Smith was an editor at “Mademoiselle” magazine. A young staff member, Truman Capote, found one of Bradbury’s short stories in the magazine’s slush pile of submissions and recommended it to Smith, who advocated its publication and became a lifelong friend of Bradbury’s.

Though rejected by the firm Alfred A. Knopf early in his career, Bradbury would become one of the publishing house’s highly valued authors in the 1970s. In this letter to his editor Nancy Nicholas, Bradbury, who was working on his autobiography “Dandelion Wine,” included a picture of himself at the age of three. He jocularly describes the photograph as “beautifully serious, as if the young writer had just been disturbed in the midst of some creative activity.” The Ransom Center’s Alfred A. Knopf archive houses extensive correspondence between Bradbury and editors at Knopf, as well as the original reader’s report that encouraged rejecting Bradbury’s work in 1948. Alfred A. Knopf collection.

A photograph of Ray Bradbury, age three. Bradbury spent most of his childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, a small community on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Waukegan became the model for the “Green Town” that was the setting for many of his stories. As a boy Bradbury enjoyed fairy tales, horror movies, traveling carnivals, and visiting the local public library, and aspects of each of these interests would influence his later books and characters. Alfred A. Knopf collection.

After being rejected by Alfred A. Knopf, Ray Bradbury’s first novel, “Dark Carnival,” was published by Arkham House, a press associated with H.P. Lovecraft and his circle of fellow science fiction writers. “Dark Carnival” was printed as a limited edition of only 3,000 copies, making first editions of the novel some of the most rare books in the history of sci-fi literature. Ellery Queen book collection.

The Ransom Center’s copy of “Dark Carnival” is inscribed by Bradbury to Frederic Dannay, who wrote mystery novels under the pseudonym Ellery Queen. Dannay was an early supporter of Bradbury, as well as an avid book collector, and multiple copies of Bradbury’s works are found in the extensive Ellery Queen book collection at the Ransom Center.